Alum Bridges Gap Between Art and Business

Business advisor and USF School of Management alum Jacob
Gelfand (JD/MBA, 2012) has officially launched a new holistic business coaching
service for artists and creative small business owners, Inclusiva Strategies.

Inclusiva’s coaching
process accommodates each individual’s learning style and personality type, putting the
most applicable tools, formats and concepts taught in business schools and
entrepreneurship programs into an accessible and helpful format. Inclusiva
helps clients put these strategies into practice, and guides them in producing
crucial resources like a business plan and market strategy plan.

Already, Founder and principal coach, Jacob credits a combination
of his many unique experiences at the USF School of Management for helping
inform his vision for Inclusiva. While a USF student, Gelfand was active in the
Working with Entrepreneurs program, the Venture Capital Investment Competition
(VCIC), and co-founded and led the Microfinance Club, an unprecedented student
organization dedicated to empowering underserved business owners around the
world.

Inclusiva has worked with a pair of clients –
artist Stacie Willoughby, who also designed the artwork featured on the
Inclusiva website, and catering company Green Heart Foods, whose owner says she
now has a deeper understanding of how she and her business can work most
effectively.

"Although I studied law and business at USF I’ve
always been passionate about the arts and drawn to creative people," says
Gelfand. "The more I learned about entrepreneurship, the more I noticed
language barriers between the realms of art and business". Gelfand's mission is to help creative professionals transcend these barriers and transform their craft into a viable and meaningful enterprise.

"I believe that Inclusiva will make a difference not
only in the lives of my clients, their families and employees, but also more
broadly, by helping to bring a wide variety of new products, services and jobs
into the economy."